Do You Have a Photography Checklist? You Should. Here is a Quick Start

How many times have you started a photo shoot – be it a personal or business one – and suddenly realised the White Balance setting was on cloudy (it was a sunny day!), the file save size was medium (you usually shot on RAW and large)……..Well – the post below could be what you need to keep in mind! A quick start checklist for the settings……

Modern DSLRs have so many features that it is sometimes difficult to keep track of all the settings. One of my biggest concerns is that a shot will be ruined because some switch was not in the correct setting for what I wanted to create. I don’t want to be like the wedding photographer that shot an entire wedding with the camera set to the small JPEG setting.

To help ensure that such things are unlikely to happen, I decided to take a lesson from the way pilots operate. Pilots don’t just jump in the pilot’s seat and take off. Instead, they have a list of items that they check. Similarly, photographers can have a list of things to check before starting a photo session. Thus, the subject of this article is creating a photographer’s list of things to check to make sure that everything is done right.

Camera Items to Check

Sensor: Is the sensor free of dust?

Lens: Are the lenses and filters clean?

Battery: Is there enough power in the battery? Are spare batteries easily accessible?

Memory: Is there enough space on the memory card? Are spare memory cards easily accessible?

Image Recording Quality: Is the image quality set properly?

Image Settings: If not shooting raw, are the image settings set properly?